bikemonster

One does what one can. Now, where's the fake humility bowing smiley when I need it?

Nellie, as a cyclist you should know that life is about the pursuit of satisfaction, not the pursuit of easy.

In that case, unless you think that your kitchen floor is particularly tasty, you may want to turn the pancakes over with an egg lifter rather than being flash and flipping them. If you feel brave enough to flip them, like with so many good things, it's all in the wrist action. In this case, holding the wrist firm but not quite locked move the pan away from you at a moderate pace and then pull your hand back and at the same time flick the end of the pan slightly upwards. If the pancake is cooked it will slide easily across the pan and the pancake will make like a BMX-er doing a jump with a 180 loop. Difference is that BMXer's don't like to land on their heads, but you want the pancake to land cooked-side up. It is entirely debatable as to whether BMXer's even have a cooked side.

2 eggs 1 cup flour 1 cup milk pinch of salt 1 tablespoon sunflower oil Beat until smooth. Add water to get consistency sufficiently thin that the mix spreads evenly and thinly on a hot pan. Too thick and you end up with flapjacks, too thin and the pancake will tear when you flip it/turn it over. You'll need to experiment to get the consistency "just so". Use the biggest heaviest frying pan that you can lay your hands on. Heat until sufficiently hot that a dab (whatever!) of butter gets a really good sizzle going when dropped into the pan. You need enough butter that you can coat the pan. Butter the pan, add approx a ladle of pancake butter and tilt/rock the pan to coat the pan. When the first side of the pancake is golden brown (1-3 minutes) turn it over with an egg lifter or get flash and flip it. If you make a whole batch and stack them on a plate, they will all be warm when you are done 'cause each fresh one is hot enough to keep its brothers and sisters warm. Fillings: Apricot jam (optionally with cinammon) Sugar and lemon juice (optionally with cinnamon) Syrup (opt lemon, cinammon) Maple syrup (flavoured cane syrup if you must, or make friends with a Canadian) Apple sauce For true decadence serve with proper full cream vanilla ice cream. Run screaming from anything that looks like ice cream but says "Frozen dessert" on the label. Stuff that in your eye, caveman! Paleo schmaleo! What was the question again?

I know how cows are milked. You must need tiny, tiny fingers to milk rice.

SARA, I stopped drinking milk shortly after cattle became domesticated. Yoghurt, yum, ice cream, even more yum, milk...bleachhh!!!! People who exercise regularly, and want to improve some sort of athletic performance (whether it's TitusTi's worlds 24 hrs of insanity or my racing in the alpabet soup) tend to work out what works for them and eat to fuel, as opposed to the couchoholics for whom eating is a leisure pursuit all on its own. When I was at varsity I sat in on some Health Psychology lectures given by Helgo Schomer (sp?), where he cited some research that he had been doing with Tim Noakes. The subject had to do with weight loss and the study was made up of a group of people with heart disease and obesity. Half the group were put on a strict diet, the other half were put on a less severe diet coupled with an exercise regime. The exercisers did far better at losing weight and keeping it off and found it far easier to stick to their diets because they set up "virtuous circles" and became more in tune with what their bodies needed.

This sounds like a great idea in theory but the practice may be rather different. After all, it's not like our way distant ancestors knew much about vitamins and trace elements; they eat what they could not what was optimum. The basic idea of minimising intake of processed foods has to be a good idea though, but that's more because of some the junk that finds its way into processed foods (trans fats, anyone?). Next it will be a call for a return to trepanning to cure headaches...

You need to train for what you intend to do. There is a school of thought that says that if you do lots and lots of miles (or even kilometres) at moderate intensity, you will get fast. I call that BS. If you do lots of miles at moderate intensity, you are training your body to ride at moderate intensity. So, if you are training to race, you will need to build in some intensity, and changes in intensity because that is what you will encounter in racing. If you go out and train at 70% of max, you should be able to ride home reasonably comfortably, as opposed to going out hot and heavy and then struggling to complete your ride. Find a training route (or routes) and start riding at low intensity. When you are comfortable with that, start upping the effort levels, working harder on the hills and alternately pushing hard and recovering. Don't overthink it; after all, it's as easy as riding a bike.

Short but not very accurate. At around 70% of max HR your body is able to utilise fat reserves to meet energy requirements because the metabolism of fat reserves can more or less keep pace with your energy requirements. That is why this is referred to as the "fat burning zone". If you want to lose weight the calculation is very simple: you must use more calories than you take in. You can do this by limiting your calorie intake (what you eat) or increasing your calorie usage (exercise) or some combination of the two. Obviously the harder you exercise, all things held constant, the more fat you will burn and the more weight you will lose. The problem comes with the "all things held constant". If you exercise at higher intensities you will burn more fat but it will become increasingly difficult to keep your calorie intake low because you will feel hungrier. There is some good news: if you increase your metabolic rate, which requires aerobic exercise of at least 45 minutes at 70% of max HR or above, your body will carry on at a higher metabolic rate for several hours after you stop exercising.

Ask yourself what you want the gadget to do for you, and what you want to get out of cycling. If you want it 'cause it's a cool gadget and it will motivate you to ride more, well then it's prolly worth buying the sucker already. If you want to use it as a training tool, you will need to learn how to interpret the data that it presents and use that data as an input into the structure of your training programme. The word "structure" is a biggie. If your training currently consists of going out training with your buds and trying to make one another hurt, all that a power meter will do is add some numbers to what you are doing. To really get training benefit (which is not the same as enjoyment, and may even be the opposite) you will prolly be riding alone a lot more 'cause your buds will not be doing the exact same workout as you are doing.

Why not? 'Cause why should the rest of the alphabet pay for the elites to get a road closure that they do not get.

Rolling closure for who? Just the elites? I think snot! For everybody...very difficult to organise. What if the wind had been blowing the other way...guys would have been guttered and would have had to create another echelon. Why is that so hard to do when the back of the echelon is heading towards the centre of the road?

Hi Dr Seuss Can I just say I love your work. Especially the illustrations. As for what you should do with your training, the answer will come down to what you want to get out of it. If you want to race properly, the whole nine yards, CSA licence and all of that, then a coach is prolly going to help you, and I expect that you will end up doing a lot of training on your own. If, like most of us, you are racing (or perhaps "racing") in the alphabet soup then look out for what gives you the most fun on the bike. As an alphabet racer with a seeding that qualifies for vets' racing in the W Cape I am about a gazillion miles from signing up for vets' racing. For one thing I don't see any point in being guaranteed pack fodder; to race properly I would need to feel that there was at least an outside chance of one day winning something that did not involve spooky coincidences of tsunamis, earthquakes, aliens with death rays and planets slipping out of alignment. So I do what I laughingly refer to as semi-structured training. I meet with a bunch of mates of similar ability, and we all agree in advance on what we want to achieve for the day's ride. Sometimes it's hills, sometimes it's a gentle spin, sometimes it's a one-gear ride. Sometimes we don't even try to chase down everybody we see. The point that I am too busy goofing about to make is that for me and my mates "training" is fun. There is limited training time in my life and I want it all to be as much fun as possible. If all your riding is for fun and you enjoy what you are doing now, stick with it. If results really matter to you, and you are prepared to hose off your current cycling routine for something that may be less fun, get a coach.

If somebody wants to follow it up, it may be worth pointing out that the word "twat" is only slightly less offensive than c*nt. Not a word I would expect to see in any newspaper. (Interestingly the Hub's anti-naughtiness software seems to not like s-l-a-g 'cause every time an Afrikaans post mentions "gesl*g" it comes out with a * instead of an a.)

Failure to launch?

Sorry tooHot!!!! but you can not claim to be a "bad bad man" and then go on to say that you put a lovely embroidered cushion on your bike 'cause mama says you scuff the walls. ROFLMFAO!

Tonton You are right, having a public fight is nothing to be proud of, but it sounds like ewep was trying to do the right thing. If Sr Colnago had taken ewep's warning in the spirit in which it was intended (instead of behaving like a dumb cent) how different could this story have been? Nobody really wants to see any cyclist, however idiotic, hit by another vehicle, but we have all seen cyclists pulling fcukwit moves and wondered how long their guardian angels would put up with the fcukwittery.

The problem with the .883 x inseam is that it sounds spectacularly accurate until you realise that different crank lengths will through it out. I think that the other bit of science suggests an angle of 15 degrees at the knee when clipped in and the pedal is at bottom dead centre. In all seriousness, trial and error is prolly the best to really get this down. Try raising the saddle in small increments until hips start to rock, then take it back down to the previous setting. You will prolly find some stuff at www.wrenchscience.com to help, and prolly also at www.sheldonbrown.com

For training rides: Game 'cause it tastes good and it's cheap. For races: USN's Cytopower. In both cases I mix them slightly watered down which I find works better for me. The USN Cytopower has a rather unpleasant "vitamin B" flavour which I find disappears completely if you add a pinch of salt to the mix.

Turtle Sports...Due South...oh, and any decent LBS should all be able to help.

Well, if I remember my mathlematricks... If perde-drolle=vye Then perde = vye + drolle but what that does for rolling resistance I couldn't say.

Turning a crank without a chain tells you nothing. Spinning a wheel and timing it's run down tells you nothing. In both cases the bearings are designed to be loaded in a certain way in use, and these tests are not really "in use" tests. STANS in tyres would more likely prevent you from speeding up rather than increasing rolling resistance.

That wouldn't work - 6 toes is unlikely to come to 1kg. That would be around 160g per toe. You could also cut the guy's ears off, which would have the additional benefit of making him more aerodynamic. Not much benefit when climbing but at speeds much above 20km/h there may be some advantage. An advantage which would need to be contrasted with the fact that his sunnies would fall off.